There's an inconsequential scene in the great John Huston movie "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," that most people overlook because the movie is so chock-full of great scenes. This particular scene is easy to breeze by.
It doesn't have Bogart fritzing out, or a bandit saying, "we don't need no stinkin' badges," or a bare-knuckle brawl. But it might, in essence, explain all that's gone wrong with the advertising industry in micro and capitalism in macro.
I've seen "Treasure" often, but only recalled this scene this morning as I got off the phone with a client and went out for a- three-mile-heal-my-brain walk along the seashore. It occurred to me that in a world where so many clients and agencies extol "kindness" and "authenticity," so few think about "decency" and
"duty."
HUSTON: Put the mountain back in shape...
BOGART: Do what to the mountain...HUSTON: Make her appear like what she was before we came.
BOGART: I don't get it.
HUSTON: We've wounded this mountain. It's our duty to close her wounds. It's the least we could do to show our gratitude for all the wealth she's given us.
I've written so many times before on this blog about the "extractive" nature of advertising and so many other industries. How capital (ie the holding company honchos) take all the wealth out of a "thing," and when the wealth has run out, as in the scene above, leave nothing behind but ruin, filth, pollution, slag.
Who shows gratitude for all the wealth people have given them?
As a certain -ump might tourette, "that's a sucker's game."
If you're paying attention to what's happening in a-mired-cardiac today, you'll hear a lot of talk about the splendors of nuclear power. The "stock" of the industry has risen like mad, while fact-deniers downplay the growth and efficacy of wind and solar power.
Nuclear is booming because nuclear is now unaccountable. How could anyone endorse any giant industry that creates deadly waste that is essentially un-clean-up-able for hundreds of centuries. It's easy to be profitable when your business model--as so many are--is smash and grab.
Life is great when you ignore all consequences but the money you make. Very few actions "make no wake." And very few wakes don't swamp the less-fortunate. This is too long to engrave on a coin or a dollar bill, but it's a heckuva lot more precise than e pluribus unum.
This is loo goo bree us for a Friday post, I know.
But the ad industry seems in an irreversible death spiral. Ten years ago, WPP employed 200,000 people. Today, about 98,000. Similarly, we used to build industries, categories, companies, markets, economies, sales, jobs. We were the spark of the world's greatest economy.
Today, we win awards. Make fake ads people in the industry (and no one else) sees. And make a billion small ads a day that stick to people like stink from a cesspool.
We forgot this:
The mountain's been raped.
The rapists got a golden parachute and a nine-figure pay-out.
No comments:
Post a Comment